2004-05-16

Bye, bye Rummy?

--- "Der Wolf", wie der gute alte Seymour Hersh auch genannt wird, schießt wieder scharf gegen "den Falken" Rumsfeld. Nach der Enthüllung des Folterskandals in Abu Ghraib berichtet das Kriegsreporter-Urgestein nun, dass der US-Verteidigungsminister das harte und sadistische Vorgehen abgenickt hat. Hersh schreibt im New Yorker: The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scanda lie not in the criminal inclinations of a fe Army reservists but in a decision, approved las year by Secretary of Defense Donal Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation which had been focussed on the hunt for A Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the America intelligence community, damaged th effectiveness of élite combat units, and hur America’s prospects in the war on terror. According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A. ... Fewer than two hundred operatives and officials, including Rumsfeld and General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were “completely read into the program,” the former intelligence official said. The goal was to keep the operation protected. “We’re not going to read more people than necessary into our heart of darkness,” he said. “The rules are ‘Grab whom you must. Do what you want.’” Ob das die Spindoktoren im Pentagon um im Weißen Haus noch mal zurechtbügeln können? Rumsfeld, der jüngst noch die "unamerikanischen Exzesse" beklagt hatte, steckt im Dreck. Erste, heftige Reaktionen aus dem Pentagon gibt es bereits. Mehr zum Thema und noch mal ein Roundup der Folterfotos bei Telepolis.